The Torch

Tuesday night,  we had our third race in the weekly ski series which consisted of a series of sprint races instead of a 5k. The prologue to the event was a 2k mass start sprint to bring the group down to the 12 fastest skiers. Our points would come from our result in the first race, so at least in that way, it was more important than the later rounds of sprints. I actually skied pretty well in the 2k and was able to separate from the pack with the leader, Zach Russo, a recent Clarkson skier  and current Craftsbury Jr. coach. He is incredibly quick out of the blocks but as the race wore on I was excited by keeping him in sight. My technique is definitely getting to be a little more fluid and mindless. While I can feel big improvements from last year and even from week to week,  I am certainly still a beginner. When I think about how much time and energy I have put into rowing to reach a certain level and the equating effort it will take to be good at skiing it is certainly overwhelming. I think of my rowing as a journey, a long process of trial and error, successes and failures, that gradually have shifted my improvement curve to the right. It's a wonderful thing to look back on, a beautiful thing really; so many detours and road blocks that could have been easily avoided, but you can only see that looking back. That journey is not close to over, because frankly it's never over. Brad Lewis made the analogy of hiking up a mountain and once you reach the top you can see what the easier trail would have been, but you can only see that from the top. While you are hiking, all you can do is make the best decision at the moment and deal with what comes at you on the trail. `In skiing, I see an opportunity, another trail up a mountain, but maybe I am a little better informed about how to hike and navigate, in general terms. I do not seek to switch sports, but I am very interested in getting better at learning and teaching my body new things.

As far as training for rowing goes...yesterday I did 3 x 40 min on the dynamic erg in the morning and had the afternoon off from training. Peter and I did it together and we essentially pulled the exact same splits for the entire workouts. Pretty funny and good to see him feeling fit. Speaking of Peter, he got invited to the Sweep Camp in Chula Vista and will be going out there for two weeks in January. It's an awesome opportunity and I am excited to see what he can do. Ultimately its up to him what he wants to do, but I just think that boy can stroke an 8 better than anyone I know. I hope they give him a chance to do that. He has the special sauce.